ec comics – Dark Shadows Commentary

Episode 932: Just ourselves, and immortality

For most of 1969, Dark Shadows was a costume drama set in the year 1897. Among the characters we got to know were Quentin Collins, Charles Delaware Tate, Count Petofi, and Amanda Harris. Quentin was a rakish libertine and occasional murderer who was cursed to be a werewolf. Tate was an artist. Petofi was a sorcerer who had, for reasons of his own, given Tate the power to paint portraits with magical effects. Tate painted a portrait of Quentin that cured him of the effects both of lycanthropy and of aging. He painted a portrait of an imaginary woman, and she popped into being and became Amanda.

The story of Quentin’s portrait is borrowed from Oscar Wilde’s 1895 novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. The story of Amanda is borrowed from the story of Pygmalion and Galatea that Ovid told in Book 10 of his Metamorphoses. While Pygmalion’s statue of the ideal woman loved him when it came to life, Amanda can’t stand Tate. That’s understandable; like all characters played by Roger Davis, Tate had an intolerable personality. Amanda fell in love with Quentin, who is cruel and evil, but very charming.

Now it is 1970. Quentin has come back to the village of Collinsport, still young and handsome, but suffering from amnesia and unwilling to believe that he is a hundred years old. Amanda is back too. She is also young, not because of the painting, but because a god of death named Mr Best gave her several decades to reconnect with Quentin, get him to say he loves her, and then live with him ever after, perhaps happily.

Mad scientist Julia Hoffman has been working with Amanda to restore Quentin’s memory. Julia, Amanda, and Quentin go to see Quentin’s portrait, which Julia has just had restored. It is suitably gruesome, and Amanda runs out screaming when she sees it. But Quentin examines it, and his memory comes back to him. Julia tells him about Amanda’s deal, and says that Mr Best is on his way. He could catch up with Amanda at any time. Quentin runs out to tell Amanda that he loves her, but gets to the scene a moment too late.

Quentin’s portrait, a face only a fan of EC Comics could love. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Mr Best takes Amanda to a hotel lobby. She described this lobby to Julia in #922 when she explained her arrangement with Mr Best, but he has to explain it to her today. In #922 he called it “The Stopping-Off Place”; today he calls it “A Passing-Through Place.” He excuses himself, since he has other souls to harvest.

Amanda is alone for a moment with a bellhop in a white costume with an accent that is supposed to be sort of Cockney, or perhaps Australian. The bellhop makes it clear that he used to be alive, and that his current job makes him nostalgic for his days as a human. When he mentions things he can’t do anymore, he looks Amanda up and down for a half second. The wistfulness of his tone, the frankness of his look, and the sadness with which he turns away from her leaves no doubt what he misses. It’s a surprisingly lovely moment, and a much more adult one than we expect from the show at this point.

Back in the land of the living, Quentin and Julia have a scene in Amanda’s suite at the Collinsport Inn. Julia leaves, and Quentin tries to kill himself. Mr Best stops him. He tells him that he knows he is alive “by courtesy of Count Petofi”; this is the first time we have heard Petofi’s name since the show came back from 1897, and the first vague hint that Petofi might have survived the fire that appeared to have killed him in #884. He says that it is not Quentin’s time to die.

Quentin says he doesn’t want to live without Amanda, and Mr Best gets a bright idea. He says he likes experiments, and he has one he will run with the two of them. He takes Quentin to The Stopping Off/ A Passing-Through Place. He explains his idea. As befits Amanda, it is derived from the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice which Ovid tells earlier in Book 10 of the Metamorphoses. As Orpheus was allowed to bring his wife Eurydice back from the realm of the dead so long as they could make the long, arduous journey without looking at each other, so Quentin will be allowed to bring Amanda back so long as they do not touch each other until they return to the sunlight. The episode ends with Quentin deep in thought about this proposition while Amanda walks up behind him, stretching her hand towards him.

Mr Best tells Quentin that if he and Amanda can make their way through the countless traps and perils of the journey back to the upper world, they will be together “for eternity- whatever that means.” It’s intriguing he doesn’t know- he explicitly identifies himself as an immortal being today, and he has such a wide range of discretion that he can only be called a god. Apparently writer Sam Hall is imagining a cosmos where even the gods are left guessing about the answers to the big questions.

The story of Orpheus and Eurydice has long been a popular favorite. In the 1960s, Jean Cocteau’s 1950 Orphée and the 1959 Brazilian hit Black Orpheus were both staples of art cinema and would have been familiar to NYC theater people like the makers of Dark Shadows, so it is hardly surprising that when they start looking to classical antiquity as a source of material that was one of the first stories to come to mind.

This is Emory Bass’ final appearance as Mr Best, and Brian Sturdivant’s only appearance as the bellboy from Hell. Each will return in another small part later this year.

The closing credits roll over an image of Quentin’s portrait. Most of them do, anyway. Sturdivant’s was cut into the middle of the roll over a black background. Apparently they forgot about him until the last minute.

Better late than never. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Episode 579: One tick of the clock

In the first 38 weeks of Dark Shadows, the best scenes were those between well-meaning governess Vicki and her charge, strange and troubled boy David. The scenes were not especially well-written- at one point, Vicki reads aloud from a textbook describing the geography of the state of Maine- but Alexandra Moltke Isles and David Henesy always found a way to use nonverbal cues to communicate to the audience exactly how matters stood in their characters’ relationship to each other.

Mrs Isles and Mr Henesy haven’t had a two-scene in donkey’s years, and so she has had to find another partner to play off. In recent months, her finest moments have come when she was standing next to the elaborately decorated clock in the foyer of the great house of Collinwood. Today, she stands there while confronting her fiancé, an unpleasant man named Peter who prefers to be called Jeff. She does a great job, and in response Roger Davis, whose performance as Peter/ Jeff was notably insipid in the first half of the episode, comes to life and is himself compelling to watch.

Mrs Isles standing next to her co-star. Also pictured: Roger Davis.

It’s been weeks since Peter/ Jeff has spent time with Vicki, and he has been extremely evasive when she asks him what is keeping him so busy. He has turned down a job offer that would have made it possible for them to start life together on a sound financial footing, again without an explanation. When he asks her simply to accept that he has a good reason, she explodes with “You put everything on that basis, and it’s just not fair!” They go into the drawing room and after he keeps dodging her questions she gives him his ring back.

Peter/ Jeff’s problem is that he is committed to spend all his time helping mad scientist Julia and recovering vampire Barnabas with an experiment meant to bring a Frankenstein’s monster to life, a project he doesn’t feel he can tell Vicki about. Earlier in the episode, he was in the lab in Barnabas’ basement and sneaked a peek at Julia’s notebook. Julia was angry when she caught him with her property. This appears to be the same little red notebook Julia hid from Barnabas in the autumn of 1967, at one point stashing it inside the clock that has such a salutary effect on Vicki.

Later, Vicki dropped by Barnabas’ house. Peter/ Jeff sneaked upstairs to eavesdrop on Vicki’s conversation with Julia. He stands inside the cellar door, which has a barred window. We’ve seen Barnabas’ front parlor through these bars several times, and it always catches my attention. This time, the shot is composed very much in the style of a panel from an old EC horror comic book, a style the show has borrowed in some of its most effective moments.

Peter/ Jeff eavesdrops on Vicki and Julia.

Episode 209: The darkest and strangest secret of them all

Dangerously unstable ruffian Willie Loomis stares at the portrait of Barnabas Collins hanging in the foyer of the great house of Collinwood. The portrait’s eyes glow and the sound of a heartbeat fills the space. Willie’s fellow unwelcome house-guest, seagoing con man Jason McGuire, comes into the room. Willie is surprised Jason can’t hear the heartbeat.

After consulting the Collins family histories, Willie goes to an old cemetery where legend has it a woman was interred with many fine jewels. The Caretaker of the cemetery stops Willie before he can break into her tomb. Willie hears the heartbeat coming from the tomb, but, again to his amazement, the Caretaker cannot hear it.

Yesterday, strange and troubled boy David Collins had told Willie that in some previous century, a pirate fell in love with Abigail Collins, gave her jewels, and that Abigail took those jewels to her grave. Today, Willie repeats this story to wildly indiscreet housekeeper Mrs Johnson, only he identifies the woman as Naomi Collins. Fandom likes to seize on this kind of thing, presenting it either as an error or as a sign of retcons in progress, but I suspect that it is just a clumsy way of suggesting that the characters are hazy on the details of the legend.

The legend itself is very much the sort of thing that inspired Dark Shadows in its first months. ABC executive Leonard Goldberg explained that he greenlighted production of the show when he saw that Gothic romance novels were prominently featured everywhere books were sold. The idea of a grand lady in a manor house somehow meeting and having a secret romance with a pirate is a perfect Gothic romance plot, as for example in Daphne du Maurier’s Frenchman’s Creek. Willie’s fascination with the tale might reflect an accurate assessment of the situation if Dark Shadows were still a Gothic romance, but the show left that genre behind as the Laura Collins storyline developed from #126 to #193. If Willie had been watching the show, he would know that the story David told him is not the one that is going to shape his future as a character on it.

When Willie is wandering around the old cemetery, he twice shines a flashlight directly into the camera and creates a halo effect. The first time might have been an accident on the actor’s part, but the second time the halo frames the Caretaker in a way that is obviously intentional. Patrick McCray’s entry on this episode in his Dark Shadows Daybook describes the Caretaker as “a refugee from the EC universe.” Indeed, Willie’s crouching posture and angry facial expression, the halo filling so much of the screen, the tombstones in the background, and the Caretaker’s silhouetted figure carrying a lantern add up to a composition so much like a panel from an EC comic book that it may well be a conscious homage:

This is our first look at the Tomb of the Collinses.

It’s also the first time we are told the name of the cemetery five miles north of Collinsport in which the Tomb is situated. Mrs Johnson calls it “Eagle’s Hill Cemetery,” though later it will be called “Eagle Hill.” Mrs Johnson also mentions the Collinsport cemetery two miles south of town, and the Collins’ family’s private cemetery located in some other place. They won’t stick with any of this geography for long, though it all fits very neatly with everything we heard about burial grounds in the Collinsport area during the Laura story.